Knowledge Management focuses on the organization-specific body of knowledge and skills that result from the organizational learning processes and is concerned with both flow of knowledge and the making of profits.  ‘Knowledge Flow’ represents the ways in which knowledge is transferred from people to people, or from people to a knowledge database. Knowledge Management is intended to capture an organization’s collective expertise and distribute it to “wherever it can achieve the biggest payoff”.

Knowledge Management is about storing and sharing the accumulated collective understanding and expertise within an organization regarding its processes, techniques and operations.  Because it treats knowledge as a key resource Knowledge Management is a key component of intellectual capital, which allows HR practitioners to influence the area of people management.

One of the major requirements for Knowledge Management is to integrate the link between people management practices and organizational performance in professionally-run organizations.  The organization has to monitor how HR contributes to the creation of tangible value in the form of knowledge-based outputs.  For instance, in professional service organizations, the knowledge held by their staff is the key to the development of intellectual capital.  Such organizations “sell their people because of the value they add to their clients”.

Though the concept of Knowledge Management is of recent origin, interest in it has grown rapidly with the development of information technology (IT).  Accordingly, a Knowledge Management system will require carefully prepared, structured management information systems (MIS) in which information is recorded, stored and made available to those who need it.

The essence of Knowledge Management then, is the need to have designated ‘knowledge developers’ to design the computer software to control the knowledge database, and the ‘learning options’ that will guide users in finding, at any given time, information that will serve their personal development and  work needs.

A sophisticated Knowledge Management system aims not just at information-sharing, but also in meshing the assumptions and beliefs of the learner.  Tacit Knowledge—expertise that is stored in people’s heads—can be clarified and shared with others, eventually becoming ‘newly created knowledge’, which is understood and accepted throughout the organization.

Depending upon a person’s position within the organization, and his/her viewpoint, encouraging a team approach to sharing knowledge and skills may benefit all employees, or may even prove to be a strategy by which the senior management can extract individuals’ key knowledge in order to take advantage of  the ‘knowledge creation pool’ existing within the organization.  However, in an organization which is aggressively competitive and rewards individual achievement rather than teamwork, employees may be reluctant to share their ideas for a new service with their manager, simply to avoid the manager receiving a performance bonus for someone else’s idea(s).

Therefore, an organizational climate of trust and mutual respect would seem to be essential in developing effective Knowledge Management Systems.

Finally, knowledge creation in an organization assumes that employees, especially at the middle and senior levels, actually know more than what they are perceived to know, even though they may not provide solutions to all of the organization’s ills.  Hence, the imperative for organizations will be to create an organizational climate wherein tacit knowledge can replace existing/traditional systems of knowledge-sharing; such a climate necessitates systematic training interventions appearing alongside the routine scheme of things.  This will offer exciting new horizons for HR practitioners and managers at all levels, ultimately contributing to enhanced employee performance and organizational well-being and effectiveness.

]]> http://www.knowledge-management.org/knowledge-management-is-about-storing-and-sharing.htm/feed 0 http://www.knowledge-management.org/km-infrastructural-capabilities-have-a-significant-positive-effect-on-km-success.htm http://www.knowledge-management.org/km-infrastructural-capabilities-have-a-significant-positive-effect-on-km-success.htm#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:31:52 +0000 admin http://www.knowledge-management.org/?p=347 IT has been identified by a number of studies as a major determinant of KM success (e.g. Purvis et al., 2001). The quality and speed of knowledge transfer, for example, is considerably improved with the support of technologies (Ruggles, 1998). Common IT applications employed by firms include intranets, knowledge repositories and group decision support systems. KM tools can be classified into three general categories: generation, codification, and transfer (Ruggles, 1997). Knowledge generation requires tools that enable the acquisition, synthesis, and creation of knowledge.

Knowledge codification tools support the representation of knowledge so that it can be accessed and transferred. The capabilities of these tools vary depending on the targeted knowledge – i.e., process knowledge, factual knowledge, catalog knowledge, and cultural knowledge – and on whether that knowledge is explicit or tacit. Types of codification tools include knowledge bases, knowledge maps, organizational thesaurus/dictionaries, and simulators. Knowledge transfer tools alleviate the temporal, physical, and social distances in knowledge sharing. An alternative framework for classifying KM tools and technologies consists of five categories: business intelligence, collaboration, transfer, expertise, and discovery / mapping. Such frameworks can help organizations to select the appropriate technology for a given KM task.

Mere adoption of information technologies, however, does not necessarily achieve its intended purposes. According to the theory of technology assimilation (Cooper and Zmud, 1990; Fichman and Kemerer, 1997), technologies must be infused and diffused into business processes to enhance organizational performance. Assimilation is defined as “the extent to which the use of a technology diffuses across organizational work processes and becomes routinized in activates associated with those processes” (Tornatzky and Klein, 1982; Chatterjee et al., 2002). It is a key factor that explains the influence of IT adoption on organizational performance (Jarvenpaa and lves, 1991; Armstrong and Sambamurthy, 1999; Chatterjee et al., 2002). In the initial adoption stage, it is challenging yet users need to reconceptualize business process activities in order to use the technology effectively (Saga and Zmud, 1994; Fichman and Kemerer, 1997; Purvis et al., 2001). These challenges constitute ‘assimilation gaps’, i.e. the lag of rates of adoption between the organization and individuals (Chatterjee et al., 2002). Successful utilization hence requires, among other things (e.g. ease of use and reduced complexity etc.), mutual adaptation of the technology and the organizational context (Leonard-Barton, 1988; Purvis et al., 2001). In other words, IT must be adapted to the organizational and industrial arrangements (Van de Ven, 1986), while structures and norms may also need to be reformed to facilitate the use of the technologies (Kwon and Zmud, 1987). In the enablers or KM, IT should therefore become the enablers of KM processes to exhibit its effect on KM success. Without such assimilation within the KM processes, IT alone is not sufficient to improve firm performance. We hence hypothesize that IT does not affect KM success directly. Instead, its effect is fully mediated through KM process capabilities.

One of the reliable places that are highly recommended for you to come to sell your used books is SellTextbooks.net. This site is dedicated themselves to provide you media where you can sell your used books in the most convenient way with the best deal that you cannot get from the other places. There is no hidden fee or shipping fee, you will get paid without paying anything, isn’t that great? The only thing that you should do is just checking the current price of your used books by entering the ISBN number of your books to find how much money that you will get from the books and then you can ship those books freely to them and as simple as those two steps you will get paid. The next thing that might appear in your head is how could you ship the books freely? Well, about this matter you need to print the Pre-Paid shipping label that you can get from their site, tape it to your box and then drop it to the post office without paying any fee, but before that you have to complete your order first.

So, what are you waiting for? It is the time for you to make your used books more valuable by selling it to Sell Textbooks website. To help you ensuring yourself more toward their reliability in providing you this online services please feel free to visit their website right away for the further and detail information. There is no an easier and safer way to sell your books and get paid properly.

The best treatment for our children should not only be done inside the home but also outside our home. The children should also learn from the surrounding. If our children suffer from ADHD or ADD, we should give more attention to them. We surely should be careful in accompanying them to grow. If we cannot give the best for our ADD or ADHD children, we should do something to help them. One way to do it is by sending them in to a good school which has boarding school system. You may send your children into Oak Creek Ranch School. This is a boarding school founded in 1972 by David Wick which helps your children get the best education. It is located in Arizona, USA. The school has been successful in helping unmotivated students for 37 years. This school is for boys and girls in the age of 12 – 19 (grades 7 -12). This is the best boys boarding school in USA which has been fully accredited by the North Central Association (NCA). The Oak Creek Ranch School has highly experienced faculty who will help the students to be successful people.

The Oak Creek Ranch School is a good school for ADD ADHD students. The students will not only get knowledge in the classroom but also from outside classroom. Every weekend, the students will be given the opportunity to do outside activities such as go shopping, watching movie in theater, doing sport activities, etc. Because it uses boarding school system, the faculty will be easier to give individualized programs. It will make each students has good care from their teachers. This boarding school for teens has helped their students to get good education system after they graduate from the school. There are about ninety percent of its graduates have continued their study into good universities in USA such as Ohio States University, University of California Los Angeles, DePaul University, etc.

According to PMAlliance, Inc., an Atlanta, Georgia-based project management consulting company, implementing a PMO can present significant challenges.  For that reason, a phased approach to PMO implementation is not only crucial but also a distinguishing characteristic of successful project management consulting firms.  Experienced project management consultants know that a phased approach: (1) helps to overcome resistance to change, (2) allows for lessons learned in early phases to be incorporated in systems installed in later phases and (3) establishes a solid foundation of available project-level data prior to rolling-up enterprise-level information.

Second, successful project management consultants also know that, when it comes to designing a PMO, there is no such thing as a “universal solution.”  To be effective, a PMO must be tailored to your organization’s project types, management/staff capabilities, and organizational culture.  A phased approach to implementation allows the necessary time (in the initial phases) to gather first-hand information about project characteristics, personnel, and cultural nuances so that the delivered solution can be tailored appropriately.

The Four Phases of Project Management Implementation

I.  Initiation Phase: Throughout the Initiation Phase, project management consultants use pilot projects to build process momentum, overcome natural resistance to change, and gain first-hand knowledge of your organization.  This goal of this phase is to successfully mobilize your organization, remediate any current at-risk projects, and set the stage for the next two Installation phases.  During this phase, the project management methodology is introduced and software training is conducted; but only for those individuals who will be specifically associated with pilot project teams.  Also, a plan for the Project-Level Installation phase is developed and key tools are created that will be utilized during the remaining Installation phases.

II. Project-Level Installation Phase: The second phase utilizes information gathered from pilot projects in the Initiation phase to roll-out structured project planning and control processes for all remaining projects, as well as to formally establish the Project Management Office.  This phase can include the creation of PMO job descriptions, formal guidelines for project planning/control, a project web site, and a web-based activity update system – basically the necessary infrastructure to support the consistent, successful application of project management techniques by the PMO.  Project Management Training is also rolled-out to the entire organization during the Project-Level Installation Phase.  By the conclusion of this phase, the nucleus of a Project management Office is in-place, all project team members have been trained, and the project management consultants are ready to begin transitioning from their role of supporting project team requirements to supporting the PMO staff.

III. Enterprise-Level Installation Phase:  During the Enterprise-Level Installation phase, tools are implemented that are focused on managing an organization’s entire portfolio of projects.  Examples of these tools include; enterprise performance metrics, a management “dashboard” to gain summary-level visibility to project status, and project scheduling based on limited resources and project priority (enterprise resource leveling).   The intent of these types of tools is to (1) provide management with timely and accurate information about the status of the all the projects being undertaken by the organization and (2) support business decision-making that impacts the successful completion of projects such as: changes to staffing, funding, project prioritization, and workload.

During the Enterprise-Level Installation Phase, the Project Management Office staff has already begun to assume some of the day-to-day responsibilities for developing and maintaining ongoing project plans.  In doing so, the PMO staff is able to free-up the project management consulting firm to focus on the design and implementation of the enterprise-level tools.  By the end of this phase, all responsibility for developing and updating individual project plans have been transitioned from the Project Management Consultants to the PMO staff.

IV. Maintenance Phase: The final phase marks the important transition of the Project Management Office from the project management consultants back to the organization.  In addition to supporting the day-to-day responsibilities for planning and controlling individual projects, the PMO staff will now become the focal point for providing the enterprise-level information and analysis required by management.

At this point in the project management implementation process, the organization has been well trained, numerous success stories have been created and communicated, virtually all projects have well-developed project plans, and there is widespread support for investing in a formal project planning and control process.  Also, the Project Management Office infrastructure is in place, the PMO staff has been trained, and management has necessary visibility to the key project portfolio-level information.

Successful completion of this phase creates long-term continuity by implementing the necessary policies and incentives to permanently inculcate project management into the culture of the organization.  Ideally, formal project planning and control processes will become recognized as a required core competency and an essential function within the organization.

Deliverables to Expect From Your Project Management Consulting Company

Phase 1 – Initiation Phase

Initial communication(s) to management and assistance in the identification of pilot projects Project Management methodology and software training for identified pilot team members Project plans and formal control processes in place for all identified pilot projects A library of project “templates” for use during the Installation phases Standardized project coding structures and project-level report formats Finalized requirements and a plan for the Project-Level Installation phase

Phase II – Project-Level Installation Phase

Network-based, structured project plans and formal control process for all targeted projects Rollout of PM/software training to all project leaders and team members Training and mentoring of PMO personnel Implementation of the initial PMO infrastructure Finalized requirements and a plan for the Enterprise-Level Implementation phase

Phase III – Enterprise-Level Installation Phase

Implementation of the enterprise-level PMO infrastructure Turnover to PMO staff of the day-to-day responsibility for developing and maintaining individual project plans Finalized requirements and a plan for the Maintenance phase

Phase IV – Maintenance Phase

Turnover to Project Management Office staff the responsibility for supporting all of the project management requirements of the organization Recommendations to management for policies and incentives required to permanently establish project management as a core competency and essential function

Conclusion

Without a doubt, the design of a Project Management Office must be tailored to the specific needs of its organization in order to be effective.  A universal “cookie cutter” approach does not recognize differences in project types, management, or staff capabilities. As a result, standardized solutions tend to have a low probability of success.  A phased approach not only maximizes the effectiveness of the project management consulting firm, but also of the organizations that they serve.  It allows time in the initial phases to gather crucial, first-hand information, overcomes resistance to change, and leads to a well defined and successful Project Management Office at the end.

Ranking Business and Project Management Priorities

When evaluating a project management software or a business software, it helps to have a thorough understanding of the day to day project management activities and needs. This helps identify whether or not and how the software is capable of solving  business and project management problems. Since every project and business has unique qualities, by studying current project management practices and theoretically applying them to the project management software in question one can almost identify one-for-one how each problem or project management need can be resolved using the software. Listing project management software features in order of priority is time well invested into the project management software selection process. By ranking business and software needs, a manager creates a clear picture on how to create a best-fit between project management activity and software.

Assessing Future Project Management Requirements

Although it may be difficult for a manager to predict exactly how project management software requirements may evolve over time, it is possible to understand the degree of flexibility that the software accommodates. Flexible project management software allows a company to grow and change over time. The more flexible the software, the more options project managers will have to accommodate project-specific situations that were not accounted for or expected during the project management software selection process. Project management software that is simple to use, may or may not have the ability to match evolving needs of a company as volume increases or decreases. The ability to change and adjust to as many situations as possible is of tremendous value to a company, and therefore a project manager.  All too often project management and business data is segregated across multiple different software applications that do not synch up with each other and often create additional, undue burden on the company. Yet, the company still needs a means of tracking abnormal situations. An effective project management software solution accommodates change and can be tailored to meet changing business demands without degrading former or existing projects management needs already set forth by existing projects.

Project Management  Software and Accounting Software Integration

It is a reality that there is no one single software that services every business need a company has. Therefore, the ability for one software to share data, import/export or otherwise synchronize business data with another software becomes an essential component to the software selection process. Software product vendors  may put forth “a one size fits all” attitude however the best way to ensure that a project management software can share data or synchronize with an accounting software is to understand the technical requirements of both software systems. This way, the software systems in place and the software being selected may be assessed as a set of integrated software systems that work together rather than single handedly, as how most businesses select software. In fact, software integration as a primary driver to the software selection process will dramatically reduce implementation costs, due to a reduction of data setup and a consistency of terms and language used across different business software systems.

Project Management Software Vendor/Customer Relationship

The project management software vendor and the customer should establish a mutually supportive relationship. When selecting a project management software to run and manage business data and for project management, the project manager should factor into consideration how responsive and competent the project management software vendor is in both the project management software itself and also the business industry that the project management software is intended to serve. The project manager should also observe how willing to help the project management software vendor is, and how promptly and accurately the project management software vendor follows up and follows through. These are all indications of how the project management software vendor will perform when supporting the customer.

Many project management software vendors offer support for project software-specific questions, however such questions often call for business-related questions on how to handle best project management practices, for example, using the project management software. Since a project software is to support projects for the business, there should be no separation between answering technical questions about how to use the project management software and questions on how to solve project-related questions within that project management software.

The vendor should become an active participant in supporting a project manager or company with it’s own project management processes, thereby having those project processes clearly defined and managed within the project management software. Once a business is invested into a project management software, the switch can be costly depending on whether or not the company wishes to migrate project management data from one software to another. Therefore, it is in the best interest of a project manager to, when selecting a project management software, to analyze how much effort it would take to switch to a new software, if the company reaches the limits of the current project management software.

Although it may be difficult to assess the cost of moving project management software data to a new project management software without knowing ahead of time what the new project software is, part of the project software selection process should identify how such a switch in systems will be addressed, should such steps be taken in the future.

It is in the best interest of both the customer and A1 Enterprise to provide a project management software that works for our customer and our customer’s specific industry. If, in the event, A1 Enterprise feels that the customer needs are better matched with any specific project software, A1 Enterprise makes suitable recommendations and provides assistance in the project management software selection process when needed by the customer. A1 Enterprise has a substantially diverse background in software development and customized software for small businesses and large companies.

What approach to project management do you think the pharaohs used? Does it matter? I don’t think so.

Project Management Is Project Management

Erik Larson’s book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (Crown Publishers, 2003) is an incredible read about Chicago playing host to the 1893 World Columbian Exposition–also known as the Chicago World’s Fair–and the story of a creepy murderer living in the Chicago at the same time.

The project management victories and failures within the World’s Fair were incredible: debate over where the fair should take place, visions of what the fair should offer, uncompromising landscape details, and (my favorite project) the creation of the Ferris Wheel.

The book says nothing about what project management approach the organizers of the fair preferred. Does it matter? I don’t think so.

That’s my real point. Does it really matter what approach we take to project management?

In software project management, a few flavors have popped on and off the project management radar for the past few years, Scrum and extreme programming being two of the juiciest, in addition to other models such as Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and even rolling wave planning.

But here’s what I think: Project management is project management. I don’t think it matters what approach you take to complete your projects–as long as you complete your projects.

We could argue over the virtues and positive attributes of all the different project management approaches and go at each other like fans of the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. But really, does it matter at all?

Again, I say no.

I don’t care what you like. I don’t care what project management approach you say is the best. I don’t care what you think of my approach to project management. I only care that you use whatever approach gets the job done.

I’m not criticizing anyone’s favorite methodology (or the Packers, for that matter). I just believe there’s a tendency to fall in love with processes, action items, forms, reports, control charts, and theories. Big freakin’ deal. Find what works for you, for your organization, and then do it.

Project management is about getting the work done. Project management is about getting from here, at project launch, to way down there at project closure. Project management is about getting to results.

Using the PMI Model

What approach do I use in project management? I subscribe to the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). It’s the approach I’ve laid out in the previous articles in this series.

The collection of these five process groups is also known as IPECC: initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. Here’s a recap of each process group:

· Initiating. A project is found feasible, a project manager is selected, and the project charter is created.

· Planning. Well, gee, I wonder what folks do in this process group? Yeah, they plan how the project should go. Planning is an iterative process group that allows project managers and the project team to revisit as needed.

· Executing. You’ve planned the work, now your project team completes the work. You execute the project plan, not the project team.

· Controlling. You aren’t going to let your project team run helter-skelter, are you? You’ve got to control the work to ensure that’s it done according to plan.

· Closing. The project work is complete, so you and the customer have to verify the deliverables and then close out the project finances, team reports, and lessons learned.

All projects, regardless of their model, move from initiating to closing.

Now think about this: You’ll find these five process groups in any of the project management approaches that are alive in the world today. Or, heck, even the approaches that aren’t alive anymore. Can’t you see the Egyptians going through IPECC for their pyramids? Do you think they actually called each group by the terms we’ve assigned to them today? Probably not, but I bet they performed some of the same actions that we do as project managers. (Well, maybe not the same actions–if they actually used slave labor, they had incentives to offer their project team members that we can’t use: Work or die.)

And what about IPECC in the World’s Fair example from Devil in the White City? As I read the book, I could actually see the project pass through IPECC.

Here’s an aside: You could argue that the 1893 World’s Fair wasn’t a project, but really a program–a collection of projects working together for a common cause. The fair had massive projects: buildings, landscaping, exhibits, transportation, and more. Each project within the program went through its own IPECC. Each project was independent, but all projects depended on each other to guarantee the success of the fair.

Back to Business: Professional Certifications

So what made me fall in love with PMI’s project management approach? I like to think that I’m a logical guy. I also like to think I’m not balding, have a great sense of humor, and can cook a mean steak–but that’s beside the point.

To me, PMI’s approach is the most logical, most forgiving approach to project management. It was also the way I learned project management, so it was easier to accept their approach and see how it can adapt to any project management model.

PMI offers the Project Management Professional certification. If you’ve been around the IT world for the past 10 years, you’ve experienced–or been blasted by–the flood of certifications that will allegedly help you earn more, prove your worth, verify your knowledge, and add letters behind your name.

Certification has become big business. Search this site. Search the web. Browse through your local bookstore. There’s even a magazine devoted to certification. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you any more about certifications in general, but let me tell you specifically about the PMP. First of all, it’s not the Pimp certification. I get this one all the time:

THEM: ‘Ha-ha, Joe. You’re a certified Pimp. Ha-ha.’

ME: ‘Yeah, pretty funny.’

THEM: ‘Ha-ha, Joe. You’re a certified Pimp. Get it? PMP? PiMP? Where’s your purple suit and gold teeth?’

ME: ‘Yeah, pretty funny. How’s your mother?’

You’ll have that conversation too after you’ve heard this ‘ha-ha’ for the billionth time.

Not everyone can take the exam. To earn your PMP certification, you must first qualify for the exam. You have to prove education and hours of experience, and pass a 200-question exam. After the exam, you maintain your certification by earning Professional Development Units (PDUs) through continuing education and PMI participation.

Once you submit your application, there’s a chance that PMI will audit your experience and education qualifications. This means that you’ll have to provide contact info for supervisors of your projects, proof of stated education, and your shoe size.

PMP Candidates have to qualify for the PMP Examination.

See how this certification is different from the ones from Microsoft, CompTIA, and others? It’s more than just your check clearing the bank. There’s a weeding process.

Did you notice that I said these are the current requirements? I bet you did. The PMP certification will change on September 30, 2005. The new certification requirements center on these key changes:

[lb] Exam qualifications. The new exam will require candidates to document specific project management experience, such as leading and directing project activities. This is not a current requirement for the PMP certification.

[lb] Experience documentation. Right now you don’t have to provide names and numbers of supervisors of the projects you’ve managed–unless your application gets audited. Once the new exam goes live, you’ll have to provide contact info on the exam application for all project experience.

[lb] Audits and review. PMI promises that all new applications will pass through an enhanced review process. And if you’re one of the lucky ones to get audited, you’ll get an instant notification that your application is being audited. Oh, the joy.

[lb] Passing score. Right now, the passing score for the PMP exam is 68.5%. On the new exam, you’ll need 81.7% to pass. Right now, you need just 137 of 200 questions correct. On the new exam, you’ll have to answer 141 of 175 questions correctly. But get this–there will a total of 200 questions, but 25 of the questions don’t count toward your passing score. These 25 questions are peppered throughout the exam to test their validity for potential use in future exams.

[lb] Three strikes. If you don’t pass the new PMP exam within three attempts, you’re out. That’s right. Part of the new PMP exam is that candidates will have three chances to pass the exam and then, well, they’re done for.

As you can imagine, there’s some incentive to pass your PMP exam before the exam changes. The good news, for now, is that once you earn your PMP you’re in for life–assuming that you maintain your required PDUs. If you’ve invested any time in studying and qualifying for the PMP exam, I advise you to take it before the new exam goes live.

And I should know. I wrote the book PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide (McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2003) and have watched sales rocket over the past few months. In addition, on my web site I sell a set of cards dubbed PMP Essentials that have all of the PMP exam facts you must know to pass. These have also been selling. My point? You’re not alone in your quest for PMP certification, but if you’re going to pass the exam before it changes you’d better act now.

Certifications and the Real World

You’ve probably noticed that this series of articles is titled ‘Real-World Project Management.’ Until this article, I ignored all certifications, project management approaches, and formalities with how projects move from start to finish.

Why? I don’t believe–and I bet you don’t either–that just because you have a certification you’re a better project manager. I don’t subscribe to the theory that a certified project manager is better than an experienced project manager. Both certified and noncertified project managers have only one thing to prove: Can they get the job done?

Who cares if Joe Schmoe has an MBA, PMP, and other alphabet soup behind his name, if he can’t deliver on his promises? Not me. I’d rather work with a project manager who’s practical, down to earth, accessible, logical, and can deliver, than with any PMP out there.

Having said that, I’ll go back to why I like the PMP certification: It assigns accountability. If there’s a PMP out there who blows as a project manager, it’s not because he doesn’t know the mechanics of what a project manager should do. A PMP is only as good as the projects he delivers. And there’s no exam that tests the quality, the completeness of a project deliverable.

Or is there?

I know of only one exam that tests the quality and completeness of a project manager: the acceptance and satisfaction of the project customer.

And what about the ability of management to compare a project’s anticipated costs against the actual costs within a project? The ability to benchmark actual schedules with what was promised? The same with promises in quality, communication, risk assessment, procurement, and the project management framework as a whole?

You want a real exam? An exam that really proves worth? It’s there. The real project management exam is in the results of every project you deliver.

By having a good project management, it means you can work effectively and efficient but still you receive more profit from your business. We can’t create a good business atmosphere if we don’t have a good technology, system, and management. In addition, if we want to fill those business elements and be a successful businessman, you also need to have a solid team. Honestly, it is difficult to have a good business team because we are different in thought and sometime we can’t match its thought. For your information, there are several business sites that can help you with your problem. One reference for you is Daptiv.Com. This site has a team that led your team on your business goal by making them unity with single purpose and it will be for the company purpose. Finish with team management problem it is time for you to run your company management. This site can do more than just creating team building because it is not enough. For that reason, this business service site helps you with portfolio management. They think this is needed to do and even in some cases it is an urgent needed that has to be done soon.

PPM or Project and Portfolio Management are determining the job desk for the team to reach the business goal. By managing your business portfolio, your team can work on certain focus with clear job desk. This site will helps you with simple project management technology that supports your business management. Definitely you have more than one project and the system will help you in scoring and rating the level of projects importance so the profit will be maximal. After done with both problems, you can start to make some good strategies based on the project data that you have. All what you have done related to your business action will be safe and calculated on the program. It is important because you can prevent bigger problem earlier so it doesn’t impacted the project. You can see the overview of the software through the site and see that there are a lot of benefits which we can get by using it.

They held several business events such as business seminars from women and job opportunity information. NAPW also has larger access to several largest companies so the opportunity and the info will be updated recently. In running their business, women are easily desperate because they have to face many kinds of difficulties. For that reason, NAPW also has a function to give more motivations for women to run their business. Moreover, they also have an education program for beginner business doers. In specific, NAPW has a program called NAPW Education Scholarship. This program is an education program for teenagers who want to know business world better and be a professional business women in the future. NAPW Education Scholarship gives around $1000 for their tuition collage and it will be given for 5 aspiring women as their achievement. For you who are interested on this scholarship program can visit RisingStars.Napw.Com and start to nominate yourself to win the scholarship.

You can start to register your name for next year NAPW Education Scholarship and begin your journey to get new business knowledge. Before that, you can read the program of this scholarship and also requirement that you need to get it.  It is necessary for you to find more information on your local NAPW. By using this program the opportunity for women will be broader than before. In the future, they can recruit more employees to reduce the level of unemployment. As a member you can update the latest information from NAPW Press by reading it from the articles, news, and forum. Hopefully by using NAPW as the medium, professional women can reduce their difficulties in running their business as well as giving the key to be a successful business woman. All business women are free to write their thought on the forum and the other can give the comment or their opinion on it. That’s why, NAPW also a suitable association for women who want to start their business but want to learn from the previous doers.

In my teens, that manifested itself as reading everything I could lay my hands on in the quest for the “one right answer.” I wasn’t as smart as Alan Kay to realize early on that books had limits or could be wrong. I was so engrossed in the world that books opened up for me that it took quite a while to grasp their limits. My dad used to say that he could always tell when I had finished a book by my fervent belief in some new world view. In retrospect, I suspect my ignorance was growing faster than my knowledge. But I was more focused on the inside of the circle than on its contact with the rest of knowledge.

My first cut at visualizing this image was along the following lines:

Circle Of Knowledge

In this version, learning can be viewed as either expanding your circle of knowledge or as increasing your boundary of ignorance.  So, the more you learn the more you know, but also the more you know that you don’t know.  Depending on your temperament, this can be either encouraging or discouraging to your efforts to continue learning.

Formal schooling focuses attention on the inside of the circle and keeps you carefully inside the boundaries. The credentialing system of education looks backward at what you are supposed to have learned. On the plus side, a good school environment helps keep you from falling off the edge into material you are unable to understand or appreciate. I can remember trying to read various books on philosophy in my wildly eclectic romps through the public library during my high school days. All fields have their professional vocabulary and one purpose of schools is to introduce you to that vocabulary in a coherent order. While we are hard-wired to learn spoken languages simply by being immersed in them, I don’t think the same strategy would work as well for learning calculus or modern European history.

The danger of formal schooling (even when well done) is too much focus on what you already know. If you don’t push yourself out to the boundaries, you seriously limit your opportunities for significant new learning. Formal schooling tends to overly protect you from failure and, therefore, from opportunities for deeper learning. Granted, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of failure in real learning courtesy of my work with Roger Schank. The more important learning becomes as an ongoing career development activity, the more you have to deal with not knowing. This can become a real challenge as you advance in your career and as you become recognized for your expertise.

Over time and as you get farther away from your school days, your circle of knowledge starts to get spiky:

Lumpy Circle Of Knowledge

You become more expert and informed on certain topics at the expense of others. The nice, well-rounded, circle that might have characterized the end of a classical liberal arts education has been replaced with the distinctive profile of an expert in some particular domain.

If you assume that you do, in fact, need to continue to learn, regardless of your current level of expertise, is there some way to use this notion of the “boundary of ignorance” to guide ongoing learning? For an individual topic,

Monitoring your curiosity consists of becoming aware of terms, tools, topics, and techniques that you are encountering in your environment, yet are not part of your current knowledge and skills. As these become visible to you, the next step is to cluster and chunk that material into a learning agenda; a sequence of topics ranging from the nearly familiar to the barely recognized. [IT Learning at the Boundaries of Your Ignorance]

In addition to tuning into the language of a topic, you can also start to identify the experts and authorities who are working in the domain.

In general, your learning agenda is not likely to be a single topic. Instead, you will be pushing out along multiple dimensions. It might be helpful to visualize that process in terms of progress along several learning vectors. For example, I might group my learning activities along the following dimensions:

Learning Vectors

This larger picture of learning would help assess what kind of balance I was striking across topics and whether that balance was suitable.

What you are left with at this point is a map for what you want to learn based on the edges of what you know now coupled with what captures your curiosity. What comes next is the effort to learn topic by topic and to fit that learning into the demands of performing.

by Jim McGee

]]> http://www.knowledge-management.org/circles-of-knowledge-and-boundaries-of-ignorance.htm/feed 0